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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.
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
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.
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.
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
> 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.
I was skeptical, so I did a web search. This Boing Boing post has links to coverage from CNN and CBS. I guess he really said it.
Here's the exact quote (from Wally O'Dell, Diebold CEO and former Republican fundraiser):
That's why it's not a big deal. But it doesn't stop you or the editors from making a mountain out of a molehill.
Did you RTFA? They said they didn't think it would change the out come of the election, because they weren't able to do a full recount. The recount they did was rigged. They said they were only following standard procedure. If that's not going to effect the outcome I don't know what is. The flawed recount still gave Kerry more votes. If this was done in every county in Ohio it could have swung the election.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
You make an interesting ethical point, but in a properly designed voting system the outcome of the election does not depend on the honesty or integrity of any of the participants. Specifically, the system should work even if EVERY participant in the process is a partisan that is highly motivated to steal the election, because the process should be designed to assume that and still ensure the integrity of the result. That's why, for example, there should always be multiple witnesses for every step of the process representing all interested parties, each of whom is highly motivated to keep the other participants from getting away with anything.
Unfortunately, many states give quite a bit of power in determining how elections are run to a Secretary of State that is elected based on party affiliation, which undermines the system significantly. Combining that with the deployment of voting systems (DRE's) that are designed to be impossible to audit, it's hard to have faith in the integrity of the election process, because you have good reasons not to trust the people adminstering the process, and no way to verify the results independently.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!