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Ohio Recount Rigging Case Goes to Court
The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting that the trial of the three election workers accused of rigging the 2004 presidential election recount in Cuyahoga County is finally underway. As you may recall, this was the case where poll workers 'randomly' selected the precincts to recount by first eliminating from consideration precincts where the number of ballots handed out on Election Day failed to match the number of ballots cast and, then opening the ballot boxes in private and pre-counting until they found cases which would match up. What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really 'wrong,' presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.
I can only hope that their excuse of "it was too hard to keep our democracy" falls on deaf ears and they are punished for their actions. That said I don't even know how this could be considered a reasonable argument since they had to count the boxes twice if I understand thing correctly.
More clearly:
When the party in power in the state or county wins it is the will of the people.
When the other party wins, it was stolen.
The initial count showed her trailing Rossi by 261 votes Recount #1 diminished that lead to only 42 votes. Recount #2 gave her a 10-vote lead. Enter the courts, tossing in some ballots, tossing out others. The final results had Christine Gregoire ahead by 130 votes
... and not CNN. I suppose if we had a respectable voter turn out, then big media might think we would find election fraud newsworthy. I guess the president just isn't as important as "American Idol".
We are all just people.
LOL recounts.
Republicans "asked county auditors statewide to reconsider ballots that were rejected on Election Day." Because apparently when Democrats can't punch out a hole right, they're stupid idiots, but when Republicans can't fill out a ballot, their voice deserves to be heard.
If you're going to point fingers and call hypocrisy, stand on less shaky ground next time. It also helps when you're not trying to defend people that explicitly broke the law.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
On when they would do a full hand-count, if needed: "Our plan was to regroup after Christmas and just work through it." That quote strikes me as awfully suspicious itself. If the election results were in dispute, waiting a couple months to actually start counting all the ballots by hand seems incredibly lax, at best.
What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really 'wrong,' presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.
Laziness is a great excuse for election fraud.
Please... you have a better chance of finding a do-do bird in Cuyahoga County. These workers were just too lazy to do their job.
Trying is the first step towards failure.
-- Homer Simpson
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Less clearly:
When the party you affiliate yourself with wins, it is the will of the people.
When the other party wins, it was stolen.
Paper beats rock. Rock beats scissors. Science beats romance.
Dino Rossi asked a judge to review the election. The (Republican) judge in (conservative) Chelan County heard the evidence and ruled that the (Republican) Secretary of State had followed the law. Rossi did not appeal, accusing the (fractured) state Supreme Court of bias.
The biggest problem with that election was outrageous sloppiness in (Democratic) King County. It looks more like sloppiness than fraud, given that the problem is that they misplaced and didn't count thousands of ballots that were likely to have favored Gregoire. The Secretary of State excoriated them for that and other screwups. (They also tried to cover up a spectacular failure to keep a record of how many absentee ballots came in).
For more about King County, see blackboxvoting.com.
WELCOME our new human overlords...
While it's good to scrutinize problems with our electoral system, I think there's too much of an obsession with Ohio. It wasn't the narrowest race, nor was it the one with the most irregularities, but it's where all the hindsight gets focused. It's easy to see why... Ohio was the state that came closest to swinging the election the other way, and thus becomes the center of all the "OMG Bush stoled teh election AGAIN!" rhetoric. However, this emphasis exclusively on Ohio (and Florida in the previous election) overlooks the issues everywhere else. It effectively says, who cares if there were problems in Michigan (or wherever), Kerry won that state so let's not worry about the election there. Electoral problems should be scrutinized and fixed based on their severity and merits, not how well they play into some "what if the other guy had won?" scenario.
Does this mean we'll be seeing criminal charges against others who subvert the voting process, say by shipping machines with different software than they submitted for certification, or trying to obstruct voting on election day?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Am I the only person that thinks that willfully subverting the electoral process, on which every thing in our country's governance hinges, should be tried as NOTHING LESS than treason?
I don't care if you're running for dog catcher... the democratic process should be defended with the most uncompromising principles possible, should it not?
In reference to your assertion of cranial-rectal immersion, the Republicants (spelling error mine) happened to have the power, and thus the ability to be ruthless with it, which they undeniably did. As for the Democrats, it's difficult to abuse power that you don't have. But now that the Democrats have the power, they are already moving to abuse it.
In other words, don't be a shill for a particular party. They both suck and neither cares about your rights.
Actually, it's just the opposite. Lazy folks don't do preparation work and end up with even MORE work later. No, these folks were VERY dilligent VERY early making darn sure that they could eliminate any scent of voting irregularities.
A lazy Republican operative would have let someone choose precincts at random, counted just the three and then found out that they then had to recount every single ballot.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The law says they have to manually recount a randomly selected 3%, and if that comes out close enough they can do the rest of the recount by running it through the machine again. Otherwise they would have had to manually recount them all.
So they did a quick search for precincts that might match (e.g., skip the ones where the total number of votes was way off or that otherwise looked fishy), counted some of them until the had 3% that would pass muster, and that became their "random sample" for the public recount.
What is amazing is that they (&, IIRC, the voting machine tech that helped them) admitted this to the people doing the recount.
--MarkusQ
"Me"
The American Way. Our values do persist in these troubled times! Hurrah!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Yes they are all corrupt or unethical in some manner.
The difference as I see it is republicans screw over the entire US population and selective populations of other countries that happen to have something they want, while Democrats just screw interns.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Aren't they?
Plus, it's a heavily Democratic county.
The latest Slashdot meme.
> When the party in power in the state or county wins it is the
> will of the people.
I don't think there's any question about the outcome in this case. From TFA:
# Candidates for president from the Green and Libertarian parties requested
# the Ohio recount. State laws and regulations specify how a recount works.
In other words, the Democrats, who lost by a narrow margin, did not request the recount. If there'd been any real question about the outcome, they would have done so. So that's not what's at stake.
What *is* at stake is that we CANNOT have election officials violating election laws and getting away with it. They acted to avoid a painful and expensive recount process that would not change anything, but they did not have the authority to do that, and we cannot let them off with a stern lecture and a slap on the wrist, because if we do, it'll happen again, and again, and again, and at some point it'll happen when it matters. I hope the courts rake them over the coals but *good*. Make an example out of them: we will not tolerate election law violations.
The 2004 election isn't what's at stake here. The 2008 and 2012 and 2016 elections, and every one that follows, are what's at stake.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The excuse doesn't hold water. If the election were fair, statistically it would be very unlikely for the selected boxes to require the recount. And these workers are all paid for their time. (Btw, they are on paid leave as I write this.) The only reason that really makes sense is these poll workers were involved in or had knowledge of the rigging of the election proper (and not just the small recount). And because of this, they knew it was immensely important to rig the small recount in hopes of covering up.
This should disturb anyone who read the article:
There were allegations in several counties of similar presorting of ballots for the recounts that state law says are to be random.
And this:
They just were doing it the way they were always doing it," [defense attorney Roger] Synenberg said.
Btw, isn't Ohio where a politician just got sent to prison for 30 months for defrauding the public trust?
I agree 100%. As I have said many times, I wouldn't be all that interested in having Kerry as President, though I don't like Bush either. But if we're going to have an election between two worthless shills I'd still insist on having an honest election between them.
Further, we should be (and, thankfully, some of us are) looking at the recent midterms as well. Cases like the guy that got no votes (even though he voted for himself), the close House race where 18000 votes went missing, and so on need to be investigated. Further, we should be paying a lot more attention to things like Rahm Emanuel's involvement in the timing of the Foley scandal, which constitute election rigging of a different sort.
And finally, we need to keep clear that this isn't a partisan issue. I am a registered Republican, but I want nothing to do with cheaters on "my side." This is actually a pretty common reaction at the grass roots level -- for instance, left leaning sites are as annoyed at Rahm as the right leaning sites.
Even in hyper-partisan times, the red team and the blue team (again, almost exclusively at the grass roots) have common ground in wanting a fair system.
--MarkusQ
Sure, sure, just like it's no big deal if somebody opens fire in a shopping mall, so long as they don't hit anybody. Or like the way it's OK to swipe people's credit cards, as long as you don't buy anything with them.
--MarkusQ
When a Republican wins a close election, it was stolen.
When a Dem wins a close election, it's the will of the people.
See Governor, Washington state. How many selective recounts did it take until the Dem won?
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Heh. I do believe I find the moderation on this post more interesting than the actual flamewar that it inspired. I almost wish we had meta-meta-moderation so I could see how this plays out...
Don't dismiss the idea out of hand that sin taxes hurt (poor) families. I think a good argument can be made for it.
Can't say I disagree with a word you said. I lament our two (one and a half?) party system almost every day, and if the Dems win the trifecta in 2008, I'll be on their case on a daily basis as well.
But that being said, I still don't think they hold a candle to the Repugnicans (I prefer that mispelling) when it comes to ruthlessness, corruption, and contempt for constitutional limits. They will at least pay lip service to the notion of a public interest, and while they'll surely have their own scandals w.r.t. lobbyists and such, I doubt that they'll set up the same kind of brazen one-stop-shopping monopoly on corruption that the GOP did with their K Street Project.
And don't even get me started about who's benefitting from our middle east entanglements and who's not, and how that might affect their willingness to (ever) get off the Gravy Train...
*-not just for blowjobs any longer
It wasn't for a blowjob. It was for perjury.
Granted, he perjured himself in testimony about a blowjob, but it was still perjury listed in the Articles of Impeachment.
Sigh.
Ultimately, you want a system where true recounts aren't needed (but would be guaranteed, in full, if called for). This requires a system that is essentially non-partisan. There would be no quango (govt. appointee) in charge of running the elections or counting the votes. The separation of powers should ensure that a person cannot be elected by the same people they selected.
Some would argue that this is a case for secure electronic voting, provided the code was formally designed and thoroughly audited, and provided the votes cast were retained in some form (electronically or on paper), not merely tallied. Others would argue that it should require paper ballots but where each ballot box is under supervision so can't "go missing" (as often happens) and where each and every ballot is counted by three or more people - no statistical sampling, no "it fell under the table" and no "oh, I didn't think those mattered".
(In all cases, postal ballots should absolutely NEVER be handed to a politically aligned group for forwarding. In fact, if we're going to go with electronic ballots, postal ballots should not exist - you should be able to vote totally securely and totally anonymously - say via a tor-like setup - from any Internet-capable location. What we should not have is political parties able to dump ballots they don't like, which has happened and which will no doubt happen again.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There was a recount in this case because STATE LAW DICTATED THAT IT BE SO. Are you seriously suggsting that Ohio does not have the right to perform recounts, just because it offends your political sensibilities? Ohio should tolerate election fraud just because other states may have abused the recount process? No offense (just kidding, offense is totally intended), but fuck you. Fuck you right in the ear. Recounts are awesome. I'll take a hundred recounts, if the alternative is the selection of the head of state by a council of presidential appointees. If it requires a hundred recounts and total openness about the results of every single ballot, well then good. It's about time.
These traitors have already admitted that they broke the law, and rigged the recount. It doesn't matter who won -- they rigged the recount and broke the law. The interfered with the democratic process. They need to hang. It's as simple as that.
I know you're bitter that America is turning against the politics of cowardice, torture, paranoid delusions, and perpetual warfare -- but that's just progress, and you've got to learn to accept with it. The world described in 1984 was supposed to be a dire warning of things to come, not a proposal for the utopian society.
Right on.
These election workers should do serious prison time. You don't get to fuck with elections because you find it convenient to keep the initial, flawed result.
As for the trogolodyte motherfuckers who say "how many times do you want to count the ballots in this box", the answer, as anyone who has ever handled real quantities of cash knows, is: UNTIL YOU GET THE SAME FUCKING ANSWER TWICE.
Sheesh. They act like counting is some mysterious, subjective process.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Agreed. But my point (which I made badly) was that in 2004 we were given the choice between an idiot who wouldn't change his mind even when he was obviously wrong, and one that was willing to change his even when he was obviously right.
**sigh**
I suppose (to paraphrase Rumsfield) you go to hell with the President you've got, not the President you wish you had. But I'd still rather an honest, intelligent statesman that I disagreed with on all the wedge issues than a corporate-puppet moron that parrots whatever they think I want to hear*.
--MarkusQ
* Al? Are your ears burning? Your nation needs you.