Talk:2004 United States election voting controversies, Ohio

For a previous debate over the deletion of this article see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/2004 U.S. Election voting controversies, Ohio.

Hmm ... lots of missing images and questionable sections ("Definite Miscount"?). This page needs some work.

As of 05:16, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC), the accusations described in this article have not been substantiated. A number of issues are under investigation by the various Ohio Boards of Elections. (The investigations are largely being conducted at the county level.) No confirmation of the specifics of the investigations nor of the facts supporting the allegations is currently available. As more verifiable facts become available, the nature of this dispute will become clearer. In the meantime, readers and editors should use caution before relying on the specifics presented in the current version of this article. Rossami (talk) 05:16, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[1]

Tenditious article

The thing is, is that sure, making claims about things which are onbviously opinionated are bad, but if there is evidence backing up a statement, or the fact that elections officals were convicted on charges relating to the 2004 election in Ohio, that information should stand. Just because you do not like what an article saays does not mean that it should be taken off the net.

Much of the information on this site is highly tenditious and open to dispute. To call the shortage of voting machines in Cuyahoga County "voter suppression" leaps to conclusions about the intentions of the election officials in that place. It will be months until the full facts are understood from the vote count in Ohio. Until then, it is best that we proceed carefully in laying out the account on this page.

It is the direct result of a decision by government officials that the government officials knew were against standard election procedures. Kevin Baas | talk 16:23, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

Shortages of voting machines were widespread and only in Democratic counties. I've heard several testimonies of poll workers, etc who said there were less voting machines last month than in 2002 and/or 2000.

I don't agree that things should go slowly with this page. This is a very serious matter which is being mostly ignored by the mainstream media and we need places like this to let people know what's going on. Shiina 06:18, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I realize this is a pretty old topic but I thought I would voice my opinion I agree because their are always going to be problems in precints and that that doesn't make it voter suppression, in fact considiring the difference between the two candidates one or two counties couldn't change the status of the election. I will probably remove what I consider a POV in the future unless someone disagrees.

Falphin 22:28, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Falphin - the disproportionate unavailability of voting machines is indeed a crucial part of understanding the Ohio controversies, and certainly deserves mention. To what part of the article, in particular, are you referring to when you say you want to 'remove a pov'? Can you elaborate, or make a few representative edits? -- RyanFreisling @ 01:55, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

solomon_rex - The article itself needs to be eliminated until serious scholarship is attempted. Any political scientist can tell you that the number of people per machine will be higher in an urban area for a simple reason: more people. While the money issue wasn't always a problem in urban areas (say, 50 years ago), the White flight to the suburbs is sufficiently well documented to raise objections to the entire line of reasoning in this article. Since African Americans are more likely to be poor and located in urban areas, and are predominately Democrat supporters, this relationship is simply a demographic one - not a conspiracy by Republican boosters. Poor populations are less likely to vote, and unlikely to even be registered (with the U.S.'s difficulties). So we have reason to think that the shortage of machines is not some stupid conspiracy - and there's no effort to disprove the alternative hypothesis.

I just want to add that all the 2004 election controversies are obviously written by democrats who do not even acknowledge the possibility that many voters DO try to vote twice in inner-city areas, which have higher rates of crime, and easy availability to multiple voting locations. There is no attempt to look at this phenomenon, because the article writers aren't interested academically, they're just Democratic Boosters who want to prop up old, irrelevant conspiracy theories.

Practically speaking, I don't believe any of this until you control for poverty and population density. That should have been simple and obvious enough for a real researcher. I imagine somewhere in this world a voting machine honestly malfunctions on election day, if there is a lot of traffic and little money for maintenance. So prove to me that this isn't the case - and that the rate of cheating is somehow higher for Republicans than Democrats.

Otherwise, you have sloppy academics and pure propaganda.

solomon_rex: Check this out: http://www.votewatch.us/reports/view_reports

Let me know why it doesn't apply/shouldn't be cited.

comment from Ohio resident

I wrote a huge comment regarding this article but have changed my mind. I instead only want to point out three things. First, Ohio print media seems to be concerned with possible election issues whereas the national and prominent Ohio television media do not seem to be. Second, bceause there are people who feel that the issue is of importance we as a referance material should have an article on it. Third, the article as is regardless of seeming to some to be dubious is terribly written as it stands now. We need to find someone that can write a neutral article on this issue and provide them with neutral outside sources they can referance. I don't mind keeping some of the referances here, but they seem like this article would be better off re-written. I'm thinking about writing a version of the article that'd strive to be neutral, but I want someone else to review it if I do. No_malrs (talk) 2 Dec 2004

---

I'd be happy to.. In any case, however, the case has to be made on 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities for the inclusion of a summary and a link to the article. Kevin Baas | talk 19:01, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

You may want to look at 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities and sub-articles; they may be of use in your draft. Kevin Baas | talk 19:59, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

---

I have the news on right now. They just said that the (couldn't hear if NAACP or ACLU) was filing a lawsuit against the state election board claiming there was widespread fraud in the state and that some of it was performed by election officials. No_malrs | talk 2004 Dec 3

Anyone working on this article should read today's Plain Dealer article debunking most of these claims. Rossami (talk) 19:21, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

moved from main article talk

Voter turnout findings

I looked at voter turnout as a ratio of voters this election to registered voters last election (because of the big registration drive this year), and found for each county the %diff between its (modified) voter turnout and the rest of the state.

Then I found for each county the %diff between its (normal) avg voter turnout for 92, 96, & 00, and the rest of the state.

Looking at the difference, firstly Delaware and Warren really stand out as having much higher voter turnout. but avg. they high, and were much higher in other years, too.

Looking at Franklin and Cuyahoga, Franklin actually did good. (+4.153%) (thou it does bad if you use 04 registrations), while Cuyahoga did bad (-4.867%). Kevin Baas | talk 20:42, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

Added section on public hearings under 'Official Investigations'. -- RyanFreisling @ 21:00, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On the county scale, if the voters in Ohio that turned out would have voted the way they have an avg. for the past three elections, Kerry would have won Ohio by 67,923 votes or 50.61%. Kevin Baas | talk 22:44, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

In the unofficial 2004 vote count, Kerry lost by 136,483 votes, with only 48.75% of the votes. Kevin Baas | talk 22:48, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

That difference is not statistically significant. Kevin Baas | talk 22:57, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

On the county scale (perhaps "resolution" is a better term"), democratic turnout was 0.90% better than the avg. of the last three pres. elections, while republican turnout was 0.78% better. Kevin Baas | talk 23:10, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)

On the county resolution, democratic turnout was 6.37% better than last election, while republican turnout was 6.04% better. (using 00, 96, & 92 to determine dem-rep distr.) Kevin Baas | talk 19:47, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

Precinct squeeze

"Of Ohio’s 88 counties, 20 suffered a significant reduction — shutting at least 20 percent (or at least 30) of their precincts. Most of those counties have Republicans serving as Board of Elections director, including the four biggest: Cuyahoga, Montgomery, Summit, and Lucas.

Those 20 counties went heavily to Gore in 2000, 53 to 42 percent. The other 68 counties, which underwent little-to-no precinct consolidation, went exactly the opposite way in 2000: 53 to 42 percent to Bush."

From:(Boston Phoenix). Kevin Baas | talk 20:49, 2004 Nov 28 (UTC)

Ohio county-level historical turnout

I have gathered historical ohio country turnout levels for presidential election years for 2004, 2000, 1996 & 1992, and put it in an excel file. However, I couldn't find the data for registration by county for 1992, so I had to infer by the formula { x[n] = r1996[n] - (r2004[n] - r1996[n]) / 2; mult = r1192_total / sum(x, 1...n); r1992[n] = x[n] * mult }. I noticed, however, that the registered voters in the county-level voter turnout files disagree with those in the voter turnout history file. In any case, i did a few calculations and found that counties with long lines had lower voter turnout this year than the normally do. Kevin Baas | talk 20:11, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

In cuyahoga county, county vs. state voter turnout, cuyahoga stayed near it's avg. of 4% worse than state for 04,00,96, & 92.

Franklin county, in 92 (remember, inferred voter reg this year.), did 7.24% better than avg, then in 96 did 3.37% worse than avg, 00 did 2.6% worse, but in 04 did 9.96% worse. This is 9.32% worse than Franklin's average. Kevin Baas | talk 20:43, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

Ya, doing some more spreadsheat calculations, franklin county is looking more suspicious than cuyahoga. Kevin Baas | talk 22:14, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

I just read that franklin had a slew of new registrations this year, looked at the spreadsheet, and decided to re-infer the '92 figures for franklin without using the '04 figures for franklin. The multiplier factor shifted closer to one (which means the results are more expected), and the stats for franklin make more sense now: in '92, franklin had only 0.6% worse voter turnout than the state, and the avg. of '92, '96, & '00 is 2.18%. (franklin is 10.6% of the electorate in Ohio, which has 7,979,639 registered voters.)Kevin Baas | talk 22:35, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

Greater than 100 percent?

The intro mentions ">100% turnout", but there is no corroboration in the article. Shouldn't this be removed? --Paul 20:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

It's in the Ohio official canvass report, which was used as evidence in Moss v. Bush. You can read more about it in the legal depositions linked to from there. Kevin Baas^{talk: new} 00:37, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. I still may be missing something, but I didn't find any such claim in the First filing (pdf) made in Moss v. Bush (or the 2nd filing, either). On page 32, there is a claim of a "highly improbable" 98% turnout in a single precinct, but I didn't see a claim for greater than 100%. Also, I was unable to find a link to the "Ohio official canvass report." --Paul 01:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Ofcourse it's not in the filings. those are just statements of what the legal suit is. It doesn't contain any part of the substance of the suit. It's in the depositions, in the "Litigation documents" section.

• Depositions: (submitted 2004.12.31)
  • Dr. Ron Baiman (pdf) - Professor of statistics, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois in Chicago
  • Dr. Werner Lange (pdf) - Professor of sociology, University of Pennsylvannia in Edinburg and part-time pastor
  • Dr. Richard Hayes Phillip (pdf) - Professor, Doctor of Geomorphology, Master of History, Master of Geography, and Bachelor of Politics

I don't remember which one it is, but just from looking at that, it's most likely the last, because geomorphologists deal in statistical anomalies and that's what these are. Kevin Baas^{talk: new} 01:20, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

By the time the vote total was finalized and certified, this was not true. The Conyers report lists a single instance of this as follows:

In another precinct in Perry County, W Lexington G AB, 350 voters are registered according to the County’s initial tallies.270 Yet, 434 voters cast ballots.271 As the tallies indicate, this would be an impossible 124% voter turnout.272 The breakdown on election night was initially reported to be 174 votes for Bush, and 246 votes for Kerry.273 We are advised that the Perry County Board of Elections has since issued a correction claiming that, due to a computer error, some votes were counted twice.274 We are advised that the new tallies state that only 224 people voted, and the tally is 90 votes for Bush and 127 votes for Kerry.275 This would make it appear that virtually every ballot was counted twice, which seems improbable.

This is obviously not a neutral source because of the sneering comment at the end which most reasonable people would disagree with. If the ballots were counted twice, wouldn't it make MORE sense if they were all counted twice instead of just a few? Regardless, it reports a mistake that was corrected. It does not report more than 100% turnout. --Paul 22:22, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Please review the Lange report, available here. -- RyanFreisling @ 22:03, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

"All absentee voters must be identified as such by name and residence in the precinct poll books of the precinct in which they are registered. Over 100 precinct poll books in Trumbull County were checked for absentee voters and that number of actual absentee voters was compared to the certified number of absentee votes. There was an inflated difference in nearly every precinct of the five communities examined. The five communities whose poll books were carefully inspected for an absentee vote overcount are: Warren City (311), Howland TownshipThe 106 precincts of these five Ohio communities, about 39% of all precincts in Trumbull County, netted a total of 580 absentee votes for which there were no absentee voters identified in the poll books.

“When there are more votes than voters, there is a big problem” stated Dr. Werner Lange, author of this study which would have been completed weeks earlier if Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign, had not unlawfully ordered all 88 boards of elections to prevent public inspection of poll books until after certification of the vote.

"The absentee vote inflation rate for these five communities averages 5.5 fradulent voters per precinct. If this pattern of inflated absentee votes holds for all of Ohio’s 11,366 precincts, then there were some 62,513 absentee votes in Ohio up for grabs in the last election. Who grabbed them and how they did so should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation."

And more from the Conyers Report:

"There is also information, still being investigated, that in several precincts, there were more votes counted by machine than signatures in poll books (which includes absentee voters). This would mean that more people voted by machine at a precinct than actually appeared at that location. For example, in CMP 4C Precinct, there were 279 signatures and 280 machine votes. In BLV 1 Precinct, there were 396 signatures but 398 machine votes. In AUS 12 Precinct, there were 372 signatures but 376 machine votes. In POT 1 Precinct, there were 479 signatures but 482 machine votes, and in YGN 6F Precinct, there were 270 signatures but 273 machine votes. It would appear from these numbers that the machines counted more votes than voters." (p. 53)

" (iii) the voting records of Perry county show significantly more votes than voters in some precincts, significballots than voters in other precincts, and voters casting more than one ballot" (page 6)

And from Conyers' letter of December 2, 2004 to Kenneth Blackwell [2]:

B. Perry County Election Counting Discrepancies – The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received information indicating discrepancies in vote tabulations in Perry County. For example, the sign-in book for the Reading S precinct indicates that approximately 360 voters cast ballots in that precinct. In the same precinct, the sign-in book indicates that there were 33 absentee votes cast. In sum, this would appear to mean that fewer than 400 total votes were cast in that precinct. Yet, the precinct’s official tallies indicate that 489 votes were cast. In addition, some voters’ names have two ballot stub numbers listed next to their entries creating the appearance that voters were allowed to cast more than one ballot.

In another precinct, W Lexington G AB, 350 voters are registered according to the County’s initial tallies. Yet, 434 voters cast ballots. As the tallies indicate, this would be an impossible 124% voter turnout. The breakdown on election night was initially reported to be 174 votes for Bush, and 246 votes for Kerry. We are advised that the Perry County Board of Elections has since issued a correction claiming that, due to a computer error, some votes were counted twice. We are advised that the new tallies state that only 224 people voted, and the tally is 90 votes for Bush and 127 votes for Kerry. This would make it appear that virtually every ballot was counted twice, which seems improbable.

In Monroe Township, Precinct AAV, we are advised that 266 voters signed in to vote on election day, yet the Perry County Board of Elections is reporting that 393 votes were cast in that precinct, a difference of 133 votes.

4. Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Reading S precinct of Perry County?

5. What is the explanation for the fluctuating results in the W Lexington AB precinct?

6. Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Monroe Township precinct AAV?"

As an aside, Olbermann also blogged about Cuyahoga County's overvotes Nov. 9: "Interestingly, none of the complaining emailers took issue with the remarkable results out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 29 precincts there, the County’s Website shows, we had the most unexpected results in years: more votes than voters." [3]

Also, you can see some for yourself on Franklin County's website (Gehanna 1 precinct) [4]

The Presidential count (total # of voters = 8192):

Libertarian: 13

Bush/Cheney: 6253

Kerry/Edwards: 1916

Constitutional Party: 10

And the Senatorial race (total # of voters = 4107):

Republican: 2848

Democrat: 1259

Precinct voter count: 4346.

So, unless I and others are mistaken, there are an additional 4000 Bush/Cheney votes in box Gehanna 1-B above the precinct voter count.

And another - Hitchens' Vanity Fair article:

" First, the county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct discepencies. In Butler County, for example, a Democrat running for State Supreme Court chief justice received 61,559 votes. The Kerry-Edwards ticket drew about 5,000 fewer votes, at 56,243. This contrasts rather markedly with the behavior of the Republican electorate in that county, who cast about 40,000 fewer votes for their judicial nominee than they did for Bush and Cheney. (The latter pattern, with vote totals tapering down from the top of the ticket, is by far the more general-and probable-one nationwide and statewide)...In 11 other counties, the same Democratic judicial nominee, C. Ellen Connally, managed to outpoll the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees by hundreds and sometimes thousands of votes. In Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, two largely black precincts on the East Side voted like this. In Precinct 4F: Kerry 290, Bush 21, Peroutka 215. In Precinct 4N: Kerry 318, Bush 11, Badnarik, 163....In 2000, Ralph Nader's best year, the total vote received in Precinct 4f by all third-party candidates combined was eight."

"In Montgomery County, two precincts recorded a combinced undervote of almost 6,000...that number represents an undervote of 25 percent, in a county where undervoting averages out at just 2 percent. Democratic precincts had 75% more undervotes than Republican ones."

"In Precinct 1B of Gehanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up."

"Miami County also managed to report 19,000 additional votes for Bush after 100 percent of the precincts had reported on Election Day"

Do any of these citations suffice? -- RyanFreisling @ 22:28, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, no. While those allegations show instances of more votes of one type than would be expected by logbooks for those types of votes, none of your examples backs up a charge of greater than 100-percent turnout. The Franklin County results might show something, but your example is from an "Unofficial abstract of votes." Can you find an official, certified vote total that shows this problem? Certainly is it fair to claim statistical anomalies -- and these are detailed in the article -- but I have yet to see a documented case where an Ohio precinct offically reported more than 100% voter turnout. --Paul 22:42, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but your response smacks of equivocation. There are many documented, official cases of overvote reports, as I have cited from numerous sources. A desire to dismiss the sources does not make them untrue. The assertion in the paragraph you sought to delete, which reads "anomalous statistical discrepancies in vote tabulations such as >100% voter turnout." is not invalidated by your critique of the citations. The citations DO represent statistical discrepancies, whether caused by error, misvote or fraud.

Another relevant citation to your point about the 'official'-ness of the counts:

"In other precincts, impossibly high voter turnout figures -- nearly all of them adding to Bush's official margin -- remain unexplained. In the heavily Republican southern county of Perry, Blackwell certified one precinct with 221 more votes than registered voters. Two precincts -- Reading S and W. Lexington G -- were let stand in the officially certified final vote count with voter turnouts of roughly 124% each." [5] (both precincts are also mentioned in the Conyers report)

In Need of Attention: Appears Out of Date

This article has a lot of content referring to activities pending or underway as of mid December 2004. It does not appear to have been substantially updated since then and potentially could be inaccurate due to the march of events. It also has the style of a contemporary event, and would benefit (though perhaps not for a few more months) from editing to go at the subject from a historic perspective. --Paul 21:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

There is an excellent statement of what might be called "the case for the prosecution" in the August 2005 Harper's. Among other things, it appears to be a very good summary of John Conyers' January 2005 Preserving Democtracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, and, while not formally footnoted to be pretty scrupulous about indicating its own sources, many of which would be worth following up. Someone working on this article should read and "mine" it:

• Mark Crispin Miller. "None Dare Call It Stolen". Harper's, August 2005, 39-46.

Agreed. Here's a link: [6]. I'll also put it under "External Links" in the article. --zenohockey 22:45, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Adding external links to more recent research and reporting on this subject does nothing to update this article with accurate, current, and neutral narrative. It still appears out of date and in need of serious attention by an unbiased knowledgeable editor. --Paul 19:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Mercer County Section

I have removed the link entry for Mercer County because no link from the Mercer County BoE exists to the county Republican Party - other than the one at the top to the general page. In addition, the Mercer County BoE does not appear to have any links to election results. Even if the link was still present I don't see how the BoE using data hosted from the county Republican Party is at all important. The Board is equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, in which case, please explain. Rkevins82 - TALK 19:32, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Franklin County

I have removed the Franklin County section of two links, then replaced the CNN link with a USA Today article. The first was to an article on Franklin County, Indiana, which I though might be given away to other users when it said it was in Indiana and it was in the Indianapolis Star. The other link was to a dead article at CNN, which I replaced.

Auglaize County

The section on Auglaize County is taken verbatim from the linking website. After looking into the matter further, I can find no action on the allegation beyond the initial allegation. Rkevins82 - TALK 19:50, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Map at top of page

What is the state map there for? Also, the accompanying paragraph. I would like to try and clean this page a little and I would appreciate being able to discuss changes first if they seem controversial. Rkevins82 23:38, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The map is to show the demographics. It is interesting and important for the reader to know that the massive problems were concentrated in counties that were massively democratic - thus disproportionately affecting one segment of voters. It is important to show not only the nature and extent of problems, but also their distribution. Kevin baas 19:19, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

But the map is not located close to the section that describes problems. As a secondary point, this article has a large amount of graphics, leading me to wonder if we can reduce the load some? Rkevins82 21:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

All the sections describe problems, so it should be on top. A picture is worth a thousand words - you can't show distribution and the like with words. The images generally give a lot of information, though I think they can be trimmed down. I'll take a pass at it. Kevin baas 20:06, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I copied some relevant stuff over from the controversies, voter suppression article. Actually ended up adding more images than i subtracted - but i don't see how images can be removed anymore without sacrificing too much important and unique information. Kevin baas 20:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

voteprotect links

A number are worthless, as they do not link to articles. In the voting machine paragraph we are given links which just take you to the main page. Is any of this verifiable? Rkevins82 22:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting machine paragraph... could you be more specific or copy it here? Anycase, as far as i know everything in the article is verifiable. Maybe some links moved, I don't know. Kevin baas 04:24, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Cuyahoga County

...does not provide explanations for why there could be long lines in the most populous county of the state, including: reporting bias (election observers were clustered in Democratic areas, such as parts of Cuyahoga, Summit, Mahoning, Franklin, and Hamilton counties), voters not understanding equipment, less well-distributed voting times, and voter error (many voters that have problems at the polls have gone to the wrong polling location). Little in this article is written in context. There is a line "Cuyahoga County has an inverse relationship between voter turnout and support for Kerry. This means that, where support for Kerry was high, the voters didn't turnout, for whatever reason. This could possibly be explained by vote suppression, (such as significant machine shortages in black neighborhoods) but more analysis is necessary." That's the way things usually are, if I am reading it correctly. Precincts that have more Republicans have a higher turnout, because Republicans vote and Democrats tend not to, in proportion. The graph is also garbage for that reason. Rkevins82 23:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Election observers where put all over the place, not just in democratic areas. And the graphs and figures are not correlated with the distribution of election observers. Machine distribution, voter complaints to EIRS, voter turnout, etc, are things that are not afffected by the distribution of observers. The equipment is pretty simple to understand, so that's a long shot. And the poll workers are supposed to be trained to assist if neccessary. Failing both of these things, the law sets a standard and a maximum limit of voters per machine (i.e. machines per 100 voters) specifically so that each voter will have enough time to vote, even if they find the machines confusing and all. Thus, if lines were long because the voters found the machines confusion, then in any case that implies that the law was not followed. On the topic of voter error - the overwhelming majority of voters at the wrong polls went to the polls they went to because that's were they were told to go - and that is not their error; they did everything correctly, that is the error of the people misleading them on where to vote - which is a form of vote suppression. In any case, they were told they could vote provisionally, and according to HAVA (the law), their vote would be counted even if they were in the wrong polling place (providing that that was the only polling place they voted in) - however, Kenneth Blackwell ordered these votes thrown out, another form of vote suppression. regarding that's the way things usually are - no that is not the way they usually are, and if it is, then that being the case makes it even more wrong. Killing two people is worse than killing one person, and it is not any less wrong the second time you do it. Yyour statement "Precincts that have more Republicans have a higher turnout, because Republicans vote and Democrats tend not to, in proportion." is wrong. And in fact, in hot elections like 2004 was, democratic voters tend to do much better in turnout than republican voters. (2004 being the only exception in the data available from the ohio department of elections.) The only thing that can make a graph garbage is the raw data it being a graph of being inaccurate, and you never mentioned anything about the accuracy of the raw data for the graph. Kevin baas 04:41, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

solomon_rex: No, no, he's right. The graph is garbage, because it demonstrates a relationship that exists everywhere: Democrats' turnout is lower than Republicans. There is an inverse relationship between income and voter turnout, and Democrats are on the wrong end of it, since the poor are more likely to vote for them demographically. That's the real problem with the graph.

If instead of statistical conjecture you take a look at the actual election records from the Ohio Department of Elections, you'll see that the actual voting patterns do not support your conjecture. Kevin baas 19:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Howevery, if you some research you may find some statistical anomalies in the ohio canvass reports that put the accuracy of the official certified vote counts into question - but correcting for all of the anomolies (regardless of which party they favor) would serve to make the graphs more eccentric rather than less. Kevin baas 04:46, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

PoV

This article is heavily biased toward a Democratic stance and needs a rework. This entired paragraph is copied from its citation and has poor grammar as well as bias.

These are the same type of punch card machines used in Florida in the 2000 election. Anyone paying attention to the coverage of the Florida recount may be aware of the need to remove the chads underneath the grid ("punch guide") inside the punch card machines. If this is not done, voters would be unable to punch out the perforated chads, creating the infamous dimpled, hanging, and pregnant chads. Worse, if enough chads build up beneath the grid, the stylus - the metal pin that actually punches out the chad - can't even push the chads through the holes in the grid. When this happens, you have a "broken" machine. Since there was no coverage at all - neither local nor national - of the large number of machines "broken" on election day, there is no way of knowing if this was the problem - we can only speculate. But if chad build-up was not the problem, then why were there "broken" punch card machines in 34 polling places, consisting of 70 precincts, in the Cleveland area? And where were these broken machines located? In heavily Democratic, pro-John Kerry, predominantly black communities. [7]

Using tatics such as questions is something I would expect in something intended to persuade the reader. Beginning sentences with "And" isn't proper either. I have briefly skimmed over the rest of the article and some parts seems to be moving along nicely as Works in Progress but overall, this article may need a rewrite. (nothing very major though) My last quip is that many of these references aren't realiable sites, the sites themselves seem heavily slanted toward a point of view so we may need new ones. I would attempt to salvage the information that's facts, rewrite the facts that have a bias slant, and scrap the rest. SandBoxer 04:23, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I won't call minor grammatical quibles to invoke a "Democratic stance". Surely it is rhetorical, which is inappropriate. But if that's a direct quotation, it can't be changed as such. (Though it can be rewritten entirely.) It is a direct quotation.

Regarding reliable sources and facts. Those are reliable sources and facts. There'll all like that. It's not bias in the presentation that you're seeing, it's bias in the empirical distribution. It just so happens that, 98% of the "irregularities" strongly favored a particular candidate. A presentation of the facts that did not give one that impression would be misleading, at best.

If you want to rework that para so that it's not a direct quote and not worded rhetorically, that would be great. But don't remove the information that the problems were concentrated in a particular demographic, that's interesting and important. It's also interesting and important that because of that concentration, this particular problem had an unusually strong bias on it's affect on the final vote count. It's important to state that, and what that bias was, insofar as it relates to "voting controversies". Kevin Baas^talk 15:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

• The link to the moveon.org petition is POV and should be removed. No problem if the moveon.org is linked, but a direct link to its petition is a little dubious I think.

• • Applying the same logic to the other links, when there's an article by the NYT, we should like to the NYT site, rather than that article. I don't see how this is helpful to the reader. Kevin Baas^talk 15:49, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

---

Sorry I do not have link but I remember for sure that GOP campain manager in Ohio in 2004 was GOP tool from North Dakota being under investigation for voting fraud in ND. I did not collected the link because I expected the fraud anyway.

End protection?

No substantive discussion has occurred in the past month or so. Can we request unprotection now? Calwatch 06:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. I'm unprotecting this article now. --Tony Sidaway 06:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Lead Paragraph

I've been tweaking the lead paragraph the last few days, and so has Kevin Baas. At first I changed the last sentence from this:

  "Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution 
   of these problems and which candidate they favored have 
   led some to believe that there was a slight possibility 
   of coordinated election fraud throughout the state for 
   both parties."

...to this:

  "Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution 
   of these problems and which candidate they favored have 
   led critics to believe there was some possibility 
   of coordinated election fraud by both parties throughout 
   the state.

Reasons:

• "for both parties" seemed like a typo.
• 'some to believe' is vague, "some" WHO? 'critics' seemed more accurate.
• "slight possibility" seems like it might have been more plausible in 2004. At present there's a significant and growing body of published doubt.

Then KB changed it to "remove unqualified specifics and weasel words":

  "Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution 
   of these problems and how strongly, in the aggregate, 
   they favored one candidate over another, have led some 
   to believe that there was coordinated election fraud 
   throughout the state."

'Critics', a weasel word? It seem like people who criticize anything, such as an election, are by definition critics. Perhaps KB felt 'critics' should be reserved for an appointed profession.

KB added length, replacing "which candidate" with "how strongly, in the aggregate," adding a grammatical error. Formerly the pronoun "they" attached to "problems", but this new clause cuts "they" adrift. I think he only meant to emphasize that the problems were significantly imbalanced.

Here's my second attempt:

  "Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution 
   of these problems, and the way these problems
   disproportionately favored the incumbent, have led some 
   critics, authors, statisticians, politicians, and concerned 
   citizens to suspect coordinated election fraud throughout 
   the state."

• got rid of the pronoun 'they'.
• replaced 'agregate' clause.
• replaced 'one candidate' with 'incumbent', since now we do know who was favored.
• expanded vague 'some' into a list of types, which I hope adds weight.
• changed 'believe' to 'suspect', as that more properly implies belief in some form of crime.

Right or wrong, that's the rationale.

AC 18:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see how "they" is cut adrift - i meant it to refer to problems and i believe it still does. You are right that i meant to emphasize that the problems were imbalanced.
• I also meant to de-emphasize which candidate they happened to favor, because that is not as important as the fact that they strongly favored one, (the chance that they favor any given candidate is pretty much 100%, whereas the chance that they strongly favor some candidate is very low)
  • and naming which candidate they favored in the intro will invoke partisan animosity/defensiveness which will make ppl resist the information in the article - thus making the entire article moot and therefore unencyclopedic.
  • In any case the article is not about candidates, it's about voters and the election process.
  • candidates are mentioned later in the article, but i don't think this point should be in the intro, for the reasons stated above.
• the aggregate clause was to make clear that this phenomena is not the result of cherry-picking/selection bias. as long as this is clear, i'm happy.
• I'm happy w/ the believe to suspect change.
• I thought critics was unneccessarily redundant for as you said "It seem like people who criticize anything, such as an election, are by definition critics.", and I consider unneccessary redundancy a form of POV (this view is expressed on my user page) Kevin Baas^talk 14:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Glad you approved of some it, and critiqued the rest, which might well be faulty.

On 'they' being cut adrift, well the first snag was that 'they' is a plural personal pronoun, and attaching it to an object made the original harder to revise:

  "Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution
   of these problems and which candidate they favored have..."

...when I was first revising that I had to think about whether 'they', being personal, attached to 'distribution' (which at least indicated a group of people), or 'problems'. When the text was changed to:

  "Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution 
   of these problems and how strongly, in the aggregate, 
   they favored..."

...it added to the confusion because now there's the question of what "in the aggregate" modifies -- both 'demographics' and 'analysis' seemed plausible because 'agregate' is a rather statistical noun. So that's where 'they' was cut loose, at least for me, and argues for removing the pronoun 'they' completely. This sort of trouble is in part due to English lacking various inanimate and genderless pronouns.

Underlying principle: pronouns are meant to save time, not consume extra time. Repeating the noun is sometimes preferable.

Interesting link about Drew Westen's study, but it seems quite speculative. It's particularly weak in that by design it makes no distinctions as to the caliber of the minds in question, (indeed, this is probably impossible in 2006, and may remain so indefinately), nor the background and merit of the candidates' alleged self-contradictions. But for the sake of argument lets suppose that we agreed the research was cogent and helped prove scientifically that strategically withholding information until the right moment persuades obstinate minds (brains) better than leading with a painful contradiction.

You wrote:

  "...naming which candidate they favored in the intro will invoke
   partisan animosity/defensiveness which will make ppl resist the
   information in the article..."

It seems like you're saying people should not prematurely "resist" the information in the article, and that if they do so it's a bad thing. Therefore we should protect them from their own animalistic and bigoted reflexes by employing a vaguer introduction in order to reel in more eyeballs; the way TV producers and book publishers do for partisan works which they hope to market to the widest possible audience.

Then you claimed such resistance would make the:

   "...entire article moot and therefore unencyclopedic."

So a 'moot' (or unpopular) article is somehow 'unencyclopedic'. I've always felt the unread parts of an encyclopedia are part of its mystery and charm. Therein lies unknown territory, wonders I'll never know, for virtually nobody can read a whole large encyclopedia.

But to paraphrase: a controversial encyclopedia article ought to strive to be popular, or it will fail in its civic duty of enlightening those misinformed advocates of the opposing side.

But Wikipedia strives to be neutral, partisan only to the discernable truth. Just the facts, presented for the intelligent layman, regardless of whether those facts are ugly or flattering. We're not here to advocate or persuade, (even if we have effective methods of doing so), all we do is record and testify.

Withholding facts till we maximize eyeballs is bait & switch, it's pandering. If a reader is bigoted and shuns long articles when a lead paragraph irritates his haywire cortex, that's too bad, but at least the article doesn't waste their time, as if they're bigots they're not our audience. If a reader is intelligent, they don't need to be patronised. And if a reader is neutral but lazy, and only reads the lead paragraph, (the bait), then they'll be misled into thinking that the facts are more neutral than is true, (no switch, they're gone).

OTOH I suppose an advocate might argue, "what's a little bait & switch when we're trying to save America? Why NOT lie, just a little by delaying, if it helps people? It's doing good." Or they might argue that delaying isn't really lying, anymore than fine print that significantly qualifies bold headers is lying. Qv: the beliefs of most every propagandist throughout history re: their calling.

No, the question comes to one thing. Is that true or not? If it's true that 2004 Ohio election problems favored both sides equally, we should say so; if it mainly favored one side, we should say so. If virtually nobody can agree on what side was favored, then we say that nobody could agree, and what the disagreers contend.

Caveat. Aside from all that, I'm still grateful for your revision, as it brings up all these interesting points. Also I'll wait at least a week before attempting a further revision, as my own dogmatic brains probably could benefit from a rest.

69.87.200.193 08:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

"mainly favored one side" - that's good wording. For the sake of exploration, here's a possibility:

Since the irregularities mainly(predominanently?) favored one candidate
and were strongly correlated with demographic, some
critics, authors, statisticians, politicians, and concerned citizens
have come to suspect coordinated election fraud throughout the state.

Kevin Baas^talk 13:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

This just in

Excerpt from tomorrow's NYTimes article, entitled "Ohio to Delay Destruction of Presidential Ballots - Critics say preliminary results from their ballot inspections show signs of widespread irregularities". Highly relevant. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 06:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

With paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election in Ohio scheduled to be destroyed next week, the secretary of state in Columbus, under pressure from critics, said yesterday that he would move to delay the destruction at least for several months.

Since the election, questions have been raised about how votes were tallied in Ohio, a battleground state that helped deliver the election to President Bush over Senator John Kerry.

The critics, including an independent candidate for governor and a team of statisticians and lawyers, say preliminary results from their ballot inspections show signs of more widespread irregularities than previously known. [...]

The critics say their sole interest in the question is to improve the voting system.

“This is not about Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush or who should be president,’’ said Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York group that is part of the lawsuit. “This is about figuring out what is not working in our election system and ensuring that every cast vote counts.

“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.” [...]

After eight months inspecting 35,000 ballots from 75 rural and urban precincts, the critics say that they have found many with signs of tampering and that in some precincts the number of voters differs significantly from the certified results.

In Miami County, in southwestern Ohio, official tallies in one precinct recorded about 550 votes. Ballots and signature books indicated that 450 people voted. [8]

You forgot the end of the story. Rkevins82 16:05, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Multiple lawsuits failed in challenging the 2004 election in Ohio, and most studies after the election concluded that irregularities existed, but that they would not have changed the outcome.NYT

Actually I excerpted the relevant part. To my knowledge, the articles do not claim the election outcome would have changed - I certainly never have. So, the section you mention is kinda irrelevant unless you're trying to 'make a point', which I'm not. Just passing along the news that's relevant (ballots preserved due to irregularities).

As the article itself quotes, "This is not about Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush or who should be president,’’ said Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York group that is part of the lawsuit. “This is about figuring out what is not working in our election system and ensuring that every cast vote counts."

Peace! -- User:RyanFreisling @ 16:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

If that were the case, wouldn't the same people investigating 2004 be interested in election misconduct in Ohio today? Say, with Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage and ACORN? Rkevins82 18:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

A lot of ppl are interested but there's a lot of friction from the state and other institutions, so it takes a lot of patience and determination, and a lot of money and time, etc. Kevin Baas^talk 18:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

working on new section, titled:Official tallies not matching official records in Ohio

i cut out parts of the newspaper article that i thought were material and i put them in an order that seemed most reasonable: Kevin Baas^talk 18:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

After eight months inspecting 35,000 ballots from 75 rural and urban precincts, the critics say that they have found many with signs of tampering and that in some precincts the number of voters differs significantly from the certified results.

The investigation has not inspected all 5.6 million ballots in the election because the critics were not given access to them until January. That followed 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, Mr. Goodman said.

Steven Rosenfeld, a freelance reporter formerly with National Public Radio, said the investigative team analyzed three types of sources. They are 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, and optical scan and punch card ballots, used by 85 percent of the voters in the state. The rest used touch-screen machines.

In Miami County, Mr. Rosenfeld said, the team found discrepancies of 5 percent or more in some precincts between the people in the signature books and the certified results.

In Miami County, in southwestern Ohio, official tallies in one precinct recorded about 550 votes. Ballots and signature books indicated that 450 people voted.

In 10 southwestern counties, he said, 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.

"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

With paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election in Ohio scheduled to be destroyed next week, the secretary of state in Columbus, under pressure from critics, said yesterday that he would move to delay the destruction at least for several months.

The critics, including an independent candidate for governor and a team of statisticians and lawyers, say the ballots should be saved pending an investigation. They also say the secretary of state’s proposal to delay the destruction does not go far enough, and they intend to sue to preserve the ballots.

---

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. [9][10]

---

There's my rough. Someone want to take an editing pass or two at it? Kevin Baas^talk 18:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

TheronJ suggestion

Kevin, I don't have anything against your draft, but if it were up to me, I would start with something a lot shorter, like:

In August, 2006, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell agreed to issue an order postponing for several months the date on which local election officials may destroy ballots from the 2004 election. Blackwell did so at the request of various investigators, who report that they have found significant discrepancies in Ohio voting records and wish to keep investigating.[11][12]

After the investigations are complete, we'll know more. Thanks, TheronJ 20:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The investigation will most likely take over a year. I don't see why we have to wait that long to put up what we know now. Kevin Baas^talk 15:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Forbes excerpt

In an Aug. 23 letter to Blackwell, voting-rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck asked Blackwell to preserve the ballots in connection with the legal action. He said the individuals and public interest groups he represents have found irregularities and anomalies among the ballots they have reviewed so far, and they want to keep digging.

Federal law says the secretary of state's office is required to keep ballots for 22 months following a federal election.

Arnebeck's sweeping lawsuit accuses Blackwell of violating state and federal laws and the U.S. Constitution by "inequitably distributing voting resources, suppressing votes, and spoiling ballots" in 2004, the letter said. [13] Kevin Baas^talk 19:42, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

In the interest of NPOV, the next paragraph reads:

Last year, Arnebeck dropped a similar challenge to Ohio's 2004 election results after Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Moyer called the evidence "woefully inadequate."

TheronJ 20:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

In the interest of legal accuracy Moyer said that before the point in the litigation process were evidence was supposed to be presented. Kevin Baas^talk 15:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Right, technically Moyer said that Arnebeck's allegations were so woefully inadequate as to bar him from even obtaining evidence, but if you want to get into "truth, not verifiability," we're in for a long road. I suppose if you want to call the whole Forbes article an unreliable source on that basis, that might work. TheronJ 18:35, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Arneback alleged that the electoral votes should go to Kerry. That's an adequate allegation for a legal contest of the electoral votes. Moyer was refering to evidence. His statement was simply misleading. I wouldn't call Forbes an unreliable source for reliably reporting a misleading statement, rather, I'd call Moyer a misleading source, and the journalist for that article an inadequate researcher. I'd also say the journalist put in a misleading statement. yes, arneback dropped the suit, chronologicaly speaking, sometime after the judge made a public statement about a case he was presiding over. however, the two events are unrelated. justice moyer accepted the "inadequate" suit. the case was dropped because it was made moot by the certification of the electoral votes on jan. 6. Kevin Baas^talk 19:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I've read the legal papers, Kevin, and that statement just isn't true. If you're interested, why don't we take it to a sub-page or Moyer v. Moss. TheronJ 19:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The Contestors asked the court to dismiss the suit because the certificaion of the ohio electoral votes had rendered it moot, and justice Moyer accepted the request. I paid close attention, and I remember it very clearly. Kevin Baas^talk 20:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

You remember Arnebeck saying that, I suspect, or someone quoting Arnebeck. TheronJ 20:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes. He's the one who requested that the case be dismissed. I would imagine that he knows why he made the request more than anyone else does. Kevin Baas^talk 20:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

cross-voting: OR?

I removed the following because, though interesting, it seems to be original research: Kevin Baas^talk 15:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

In Cuyahoga County at multiple-precinct voting locations, multiple ballot orders were used. Voters using the wrong ballot order to cast ballot had their votes counted other than as intended in their own precincts. The probability that a precinct could have cross-voting was seven of eight precincts. Over 524,000 votes were recorded at these precincts in this county alone, near 10% of the entire Ohio vote. Unusually high voter returns for third-party candidates and non-votes, uncounted votes to the ballot position reserved for Nader and changed to 'disqualified' instead of being dropped, indicated the cross-voting problem. Cross-voting also meant that Kerry votes were counted as Bush votes, or vice-versa. The greater the candidate's support, the greater the negative impact of cross-voting. The Benedictine High School case demostrates how votes lost to cross-voting is proportional to candidate support. Kerry and Bush were not collocated in the Benedictine ballot orders, so both lost votes to third-party candidates. Kerry's vote would increase by up to 60% without the cross-voting. Bush lost up to 24% of his votes. Bush lost up to 10 votes to Peroutka and Kerry lost up to 379 votes to Peroutka and disqualified, about 38 times more votes than Bush lost. In these precincts, Kerry had 96% support, so almost every vote lost to cross-voting was an intended Kerry vote.

Kerry and other candidate votes could be switched to disqualified. Given random distribution of cross-voting and Cuyahoga County's 66% support for Kerry, most cross-votes lost as non-votes would be Kerry votes. However, non-voting was not randomly distributed. Analysis of Cuyahoga County's precinct data indicates that the percentage of non-votes increases with Kerry support. The correlation of percentage of non-votes to the percentage of Kerry votes is 0.423, while to the percentage of Bush votes is -0.50. Cuyahoga precincts with greater than one standard deviation (z-score > 1) from the county non-vote percentage, 1.80% in Cuyahoga County, therefore all the Cuyahoga precincts with over 3.6% non-votes, represents 11.0% of the ballots cast and 27.7% of the non-votes and nearly all of these are precincts with over 75% Kerry support, most have over 90% Kerry support.

The manner in which officials combined precinct ballot-orders determined how cross-votes were counted. Unusually high numbers of precincts converted cross-votes for Kerry to Bush votes, compared to the number of those counting Kerry votes for the third-party candidates. This, in combination with locating the precincts with the highest probability of Kerry cross-voting counting for Bush in areas with highest Kerry support, effectively reduced the Kerry vote.

this is the diff of the edits that put the content in: [14] Kevin Baas^talk 15:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

more news on ohio ballots - lawsuits against kenny

some interesting developments

• http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/144243
• http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.bradblog.com/%3Fp%3D3362
• http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/08/31/ap2987056.html
• http://www.columbusdispatch.com/?story=dispatch/2006/09/01/20060901-E3-00.html
• http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060901/NEWS02/60901017
• http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1157100024274620.xml&coll=2

Preparation for merge

This article needs major cleanup before it is suitable for a merge. In particular, I've removed several copyvios that were nothing but excerpts from their cites. Also, the page has too many full-size images. They all need to be thumbnailed and some of them need to be removed outright. The news section needs to be written into an actual narrative, instead of headlines and links, and tenses of a lot of items need to be changed (i.e. "Kerry has requested ...") along with items that discuss past events as in the future. Unfortunately, the article remains POV. theProject 19:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It has not been decided to merge this article. To the contrary, the current consensus is otherwise. Kevin Baas^talk 20:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Could I get an indication of that consensus somewhere? I just started tackling the backlog on Category:Articles to be merged, and I didn't see any merge disputed tag anywhere. Assistance would be greatly appreciated. theProject 21:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[15] Kevin Baas^talk 23:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

EIRS & Updates

EIRS is not a reliable source of statistical data relating to voting machines. Many problems are recorded as "Machine problem" without any relation to voting machines:

• 050281 "Turning voters away without offering provisional ballot"
• 050600 "not all the ballot areas are being used"
• 050703 "workers to old. inspectors are rude"
• 051399 "She reported another woman being upset who felt she may have voted wrong- also mentioned young woman poll worker didn't seem to know what to do."
• 033979 ""State inspectors" are taking names of people at the door. Then they go inside and have to be checked off another 2 times. Really slowing down the lines."

These are just a few and only from Cuyahoga County. The data contains numerous duplications, second hand reports, news reports... I tried to qualify some of the claims to make them more accurate.

• "Precincts in some counties reported receiving less than half of the voting machines requested." is unsourced.
• Cuyahoga County used punch cards in 2004
• Breakout long lines from voting machines.
• updated dead link via wayback
• remove dead image
• links -> refs

--Electiontechnology 19:11, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Despite a court order to save the ballots it seems 56 of the 88 counties have accidentally lost, shredded or otherwise disposed of them . This means it is now impossible for a court to decide one way or the other if there actually was fraud. This needs to be included. Wayne 02:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Misuse of Statistics

As I write this, there is a flag announcing that the article is under arbitration. One concern I have is the misuse of statistics, intentional or otherwise. This example comes from the section on Franklin County:

Voting machines in Franklin County were well over capacity, averaging 184 recorded votes per machine. The amount the machines in a precinct were over capacity (measured by "active", not registered voters) was directly proportional to the percentage of voters in that precinct voting Kerry. As the graph below shows, this led to suppressed turnout in Democratic precincts.

In fact, the first referred graph shows a positive correlation, but not direct proportionality. As for the second graph, it may suggest turnout suppression, but that is an over-reaching cause/effect conclusion. It assumes, among other things, that precincts with lower turnout had nothing in common other than candidate preference.--Geometricks 08:22, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

What are the current POV concerns?

The tag has been there a year, can someone familiar with this give an update?--BirgitteSB 22:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)