Ohio Voters Tell of Election Day Troubles at Hearing
By Reginald Fields
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Sunday 14 November 2004
Tales of waiting more than five hours to vote, voter intimidation, under-trained polling-station workers and too few or broken voting machines largely in urban or heavily minority areas were retold Saturday at a public hearing organized by voter-rights groups.
For three hours, burdened voters, one after another, offered sworn testimony about Election Day voter suppression and irregularities that they believe are threatening democracy.
The hearing, sponsored by the Election Protection Coalition, was to collect testimony of voting troubles that might be used to seek legislative changes to Ohio's election process.
The organizers chose Ohio because it was a swing state in the presidential election as well as the site of numerous claims of election fraud and voter disenfranchisement.
"I think a lot of us had a sense that something had deeply went wrong on Nov. 2 and it had to do with the election process and procedures in place that were unacceptable," said Amy Kaplan, one of the hearing's coordinators.
Kaplan said the hearing gave everyday citizens a chance to have their concerns placed into public record.
Both a written and video report on the hearing will be provided to anyone who wants a copy, especially state lawmakers who are considering mandating Election Day changes, Kaplan said.
Many of the voters who testified were clearly Democrats who wonder if their losing presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, was able to draw all the votes that were intended for him.
"I call on Sen. Kerry to un-concede until there is a full count of the votes," said Werner Lange of Trumbull County, who claimed that polling places in his Northeast Ohio neighborhood had half the number of voting machines that were needed.
"This caused a bottleneck at polling stations, and many people left without voting," he said.
Others said they were testifying not on political grounds but out of concern for a suspicious election system that should be above reproach.
Harvey Wasserman of Bexley said he tried to vote absentee with the same home address he has used for 18 years but was told he couldn't because his absentee application had the wrong address.
"But the notice telling me I had the wrong address arrived at the right address," he said. "I wonder, how many of these absentee ballots were rejected for no good reason?
"My concern is not out of the outcome of the election," Wasserman said, "but that this could go on and an election could be stolen. And we simply can't have that in a democracy."
Columns
Bob Fitrakis
Document reveals Columbus, Ohio voters waited hours as election officials held back machines
November 16, 2004
One telling piece of evidence was entered into the record at the Saturday, November 13 public hearing on election irregularities and voter suppression held by nonpartisan voter rights organizations. Cliff Arnebeck, a Common Cause attorney, introduced into the record the Franklin County Board of Elections spreadsheet detailing the allocation of e-voting computer machines for the 2004 election. The Board of Elections? own document records that, while voters waited in lines ranging from 2-7 hours at polling places, 68 electronic voting machines remained in storage and were never used on Election Day.
The Board of Elections document details that there are 2886 ?Total Machines? in Franklin County. Twenty of them are ?In Vans for Breakdowns.? The County record acknowledges 2886 were available on Election Day, November 2 and that 2798 of their machines were ?placed by close of polls.? The difference between the machines ?available? and those ?placed? is 68. The nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition provided legal advisors and observed 58 polling places in primarily African American and poor neighborhoods in Franklin County.
An analysis of the Franklin County Board of Elections? allocation of machines reveals a consistent pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, with its Democratic mayor and uniformly Democratic city council, despite increased voter registration in the city. The result was an obvious disparity in machine allocations compared to the primarily Republican white affluent suburbs.
Franklin County had traditionally used a formula of one machine per 100 voters, with machine usage allowable up to 125 votes per machine. The County?s rationale is as follows: if it takes each voter five minutes to vote, 12 people an hour, 120 people in ten hours and the remaining three hours taken up moving people in and out of the voting machines.
Once a machine is recording 200 voters per machine, 100% over optimum use, the system completely breaks down. This causes long waits in long lines and potential voters leaving before casting their ballots, due to age, disability, work and family responsibilities.
A preliminary analysis by the Free Press shows six suburban polling places with 100 votes a machine or less, and only one in the city of Columbus meeting or falling under the guideline.
The legendary affluent Republican enclave of Upper Arlington has 34 precincts. No voting machines in this area cast more than 200 votes per machine. Only one, ward 6F, was over 190 votes at 194 on one machine. By contrast, 39 Columbus city polling machines had more than 200 votes per machine and 42 were over 190 votes per machine. This means 17% of Columbus? machines were operating at 90-100% over optimum capacity while in Upper Arlington the figure was 3%.
In the Democratic stronghold of Columbus 139 of the 472 precincts had at least one and up to five fewer machine than in the 2000 presidential election. Two of Upper Arlington?s 34 precincts lost at least one machine. In the 2004 presidential election, 29% of Columbus? precincts, despite a massive increase in voter registration and turnout, had fewer machines than in 2000. In Upper Arlington, 6% had fewer machines in 2004 One of those precincts had a 25% decline in voter registration and the other had a 1% increase. Compare that to Columbus ward 1B, where voter registration went up 27%, but two machines were taken away in the 2004 election. Or look at 23B where voter registration went up 22% and they lost two machines since the 2000 election, causing an average of 207 votes to be cast on each of the remaining machines. In the year 2000, only 97 votes were cast per machine in the precinct. Thus, in four years, the ward went from optimum usage to system failure.
Jeff Graessle, Franklin County Election Operations Division Manager, told the Citizen?s Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) Ohio voting rights activists that Franklin County does not use a simple 100 votes per machine guideline. Rather, they allocated their machines in the 2004 election based on a new criteria determined by ACTIVE registered voters. Hence, an affluent area like Upper Arlington which has shown a consistent pattern of voters is rewarded with more machines and fewer losses. A less affluent area of Columbus where voters miss voting at more elections and may only come out in a hotly tested election, like Bush-Kerry, are punished with fewer machines.
Of course, there?s a direct correlation between affluence and votes for Bush and below medium income areas and votes for Kerry. Franklin County, Ohio?s formula served to disenfranchise disproportionately poor, minority and Democratic voters under the guise of rewarding the ?likely? voter or active registered voters.
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Posted by Hannah at November 15, 2004 08:02 PM