Kenneth Blackwell gives his take on the Ohio election
by pointsoflight
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/5/54114/93731
Wed Jan 5th, 2005 at 02:41:14 PDT
Ohio's Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, has finally spoken out about the election in Ohio.
As many of you are no doubt aware, Blackwell has come under tremendous scrutiny over the last few
months due to issues concerning the election in Ohio. Below the fold, I review some of the things he's been
criticized for, summarize some questions that were asked of him by the dems on the Judiciary Committee,
then turn to some statements he came forward with in the last week about the election in Ohio.
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Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
Blackwell not only serves as the Secretary of State in Ohio, but also served as the Campaign Chair for
Bush/Cheney '04. His state was identified as a likely battleground state many months before the election.
Many thought Ohio would be the "new Florida" and go a long way toward determining the outcome of the
presidential race. Unfortunately, Ohio was the "Florida" of 2004 in more ways than one. Blackwell has been
strongly criticized for a number of policies he implemented for the 2004 election, as well as his coordination
of the vote count and recount. Here are some key things raised by his critics, but they're by no means
exhaustive:
--Blackwell issued an order that county boards were required to strictly enforce the provision that all
registrations must be on eighty pound stock paper or should be ruled invalid. This order came within just
four weeks of the deadline for registration. Problem is, this paperweight rule was not widely known or
distributed, and for several months, Board of Elections' web sites encouraged voters to print out an online
registration form and mail it in, with no mention of paperweights. Under heavy pressure, Blackwell finally
retracted this order shortly before the registration deadline. However, the order likely discouraged
registration during a critical registration period. It's also not clear how many registrations were invalidated
during the time the ruling was in effect or after it was rescinded, especially given that the paperweight
directive continued to be posted on official Secretary of State and BOE web sites through election day.
--Blackwell also issued an order (described in this motion) that those who had requested but not received an
absentee ballot could not vote by provisional ballot on election day, contrary to the Help American Vote Act
(HAVA). Since thousands of voters reportedly did not receive their absentee ballots prior to election day,
this order would've deprived them of their right to vote. Blackwell was sued in Federal court, and a judge
granted a temporary restraining order, but not until 2 p.m. on Election Day. Prior to that, anyone who was
on the absentee ballot list was not allowed to vote.
--Blackwell also issued an order (described here, p. 31-36) that provisional ballots would only be counted if
cast at the correct precinct. This, too, is contrary to the intent of HAVA, and the order came down despite
well-known reports of a misinformation campaign in which voters were told that their polling location had
changed when it had not. It's especially troubling that the "wrong precinct" was, in some cases, just the
wrong table in the right room of the right building. In many urban areas, the same location was used for
multiple precincts, with one table for one precinct, another table for a second precinct, etc. So if a voter
went to the wrong table--easy to do give the poor signage, massive crowding, etc.--then they wouldn't be on
the registration list, would therefore be instructed to cast a provisional ballot, but then that ballot was
disqualified as being cast in the wrong precinct (i.e., at the wrong table). Thousands of provisional ballots
were rejected on the basis of this wrong-precinct rule (400 in one polling location alone). This undoubtedly
had a differential impact on democratic voters since the multiple-table scenario was specific to urban polling
places.
--BOE documents from Franklin County (including Columbus) show that at least 81 voting machines were
not deployed on election day despite frantic calls from precincts (with other reports suggesting as many as
125 undeployed machines). One election official stated under oath on election day that there were no
additional machines available, and has since backtracked. The failure to deploy the machines still has not
been explained and there is no indication that it's being investigated.
--Ohio election laws require full access to all voting records. Failure to give access is defined by Ohio code
as a prima facie case of election fraud. Nonetheless, Blackwell ordered a lockdown of the polling books,
absentee ballots, and provisional ballots in the weeks that followed the election, and the lockdown continued
even after the official count and recount. In at least one county, those who asked to see these materials were
told that they will not be available until mid-January, which is of course after the January 6 casting of the
electoral votes.
--Blackwell took six weeks to certify the election. States with similar or larger populations took two weeks.
This precluded an examination of many of the election records (since Blackwell could claim it was still the
"canvassing period"), and effectively ran out the clock on potential investigations into irregularities before
the casting and counting of the states electoral votes.
--Blackwell also failed to enforce his own office's rules for conducting a recount. The recount rules on the
Secretary of State web site specifically requires that precincts be selected randomly for the 3% handcount.
Yet Blackwell directed BOEs to select precincts however they wanted to, and it turns out that many counties
did not use random selection. Recount rules also require a full hand count if there is a mismatch between the
3% handcount and machine count. There are at least six cases in which there were mismatches but a full
hand count was not conducted, yet Blackwell has not stepped in.
--Blackwell also failed to enforce Ohio law that says all members of the board and entitled observers must
be present during all interaction with ballots during the canvassing period. There are reports from the
Cobb/Badnarik observers that spoiled ballots had been removed, other ballots had been altered, and/or
ballots had been sorted prior to the recount without witnesses present.
--Blackwell also failed to enforce Ohio law that prohibits election machinery from being serviced, modified,
or altered in any way subsequent to an election, unless it is done so in the presence of the full board of
elections and other observers. Blackwell allowed Triad and other company officials to access to voting
machinary prior to the recount (without observers present) to test the machines and suppress all counts other
than the presidential race. In some cases, technicians were given remote access to the tabulators via modem.
This was allowed despite the fact that one reason the recount was requested was due to concerns about the
security and accuracy of vote tabulating computers.
--There are some very clear cases of miscounts, such as in Cuyahoga County, where third-party candidates
received nearly as many votes as Kerry in some precincts. This likely resulted from ballots from one
precinct being counted on tabulators programmed for another precinct housed in the same room (but which
used a different ordering of candidates). In other precincts there were more votes counted than there were
voters. Yet Blackwell certified even these clearly anomalous results without any inquiries.
--The primary duty of the Secretary of State as defined in the Ohio Constitution is to protect the right to vote
for all citizens and investigate all problems and irregularities they may have affected that right. Yet there are
no indications that Blackwell has investigated the problems and miscounts cited above. There's no
indication that he's investigated the unauthorized access of an ES&S technician to a vote tabulator shortly
before the election, even though this was reported to him. There's no indication that he's investigated the
election-night lockdown in Ohio. Yet this is precisely the job he swore to do when he took his oath of office.
--Finally, Blackwell used his post as supervisor of elections to actively lead a campaign to pass the Marriage
Amendment initiative...another clear conflict of interest to go along with his position as the Bush/Cheney
'04 Campaign Chair.
Letter from the House Judiciary Dems
The democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Blackwell in early December to ask about
some of the problems in Ohio. The letter included 34 specific questions on the Warren County lockdown,
discrepencies and peculiarties in Perry County, unusual results in Butler and Cuyahoga Counties, spoiled
ballets, overvotes in Franklin County, discrepencies in Miami County, machine problems in Mahoning
County, machine shortages, invalidated provision ballots, and the directive to reject voter registration forms.
A follow-up asked two additional questions about unauthorized access to a voting tabulator prior to the
election.
Among the questions asked were the following:
--Why did Warren County officials exclude members of the press from observing vote counting on election
night, claiming an FBI agent had warned of a terrorist threat that was a "10" on a scale of one to ten, but the
FBI has no knowledge of such a warning?
--Why did precincts in Perry County apparently record more votes than voters?
--Why did historically Democratic precincts in Cleveland record up to twenty-two times more votes for the
Constitution Party Presidential candidate than all third-party candidates combined received in the 2000
election?
--Why did voters in Mahong County report that when they attempted to record a vote for John Kerry their
vote was displayed as being cast for George W. Bush?
--Why did there appear to be a shortage of voting machines in traditionally Democratic precincts on election
day, causing up to ten hour delays for voters, while there was an apparent surplus of voting machines in
traditionally Republican precincts?
Blackwell gave a terse response to that letter and did not address any of the specific questions that were
asked. He's repeately brushed off all legitimate questions about the election, has characterized the election
as having gone very smoothly, and has recently referred to inquiries about the election as amounting to
"harassment."
Blackwell finally speaks out! To his "friends" at least...
Blackwell has been very vocal in the last week, however. You see, he has aspirations of running for
governor. In support of that effort, he recently gave a talk called "Ethics in Leadership." The latest news is
that he sent out a letter just last week to solicit funds for his campaign. You might find some of his opening
comments rather interesting:
Dear Friend,
As Co-Chairman of Bush/Cheney '04 in Ohio, I want to say thank you for helping deliver the great Buckeye
State for George W. Bush.
Without your enthusiasm, generous support and vote, I'm afaird the president would have lost...
...And an unapologetic liberal Democrat named John Kerry would've won.
Thankfully, you and I stopped that disaster from happening!
My friend, not only would that have been a terrible result for Ohio -- it would have been a horrible outcome
for the families and taxpayers of America.
(continued)