OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: How the last presidential election awoke me from an unsound sleep

Because of that film and after attending the hearings, I volunteered to be an official witness of the Election 2004 Recount. I have no special skills in either politics or vote recounts but in an effort to get to the truth behind serious doubts regarding our free and fair election, extra hands were needed and I resolved to make a small difference by merely participating in the election vote recount. I had a very different Christmas season that year and it had a lot to do with the odd coincidence of my living in Columbus, the capital city of Ohio where the swing vote happened.

My assignment was in Ashland County, Ohio, about halfway between Columbus and Cleveland. Because of obstructionist delays by Ohio's Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who is also the Co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign in Ohio, we weren't able to get a recount done before the electoral vote was cast, but the recount proceeded anyway.

Many people were needed on a moment's notice in the midst of already crowded holiday time. To be frank, I wasn't at all ready for such a job, and I knew it. Yet, the goal was to have each county's recount witnessed. I was told to watch the process and that anything I observed would be valuable information.

I resolved to do my best, overcoming basic hesitations. I didn't have enough time to study the Ohio Recount Law so that I would know all the right questions to ask and I didn't really want to confront officious personalities should I spot an error in the count. Yet, I couldn't seem to get over seeing those long lines and then hearing hours of sworn testimony ...as in, under oath to God and country... at public meetings about peoples electronic vote inexplicably switching from Gore to Bush and other frighteningly unacceptable irregularities on election day.

What I did want to do was bake a few cookies before my son got home from college on Christmas break. I wanted to rest from three trips out of town, for work, in the last two weeks. I wanted, at least, to put the Christmas tree upright in its stand. In Franklin County, though, we'd just seen too much to be able to sip our eggnog in peace without this last effort. After the recount was done, it might be possible to put our feet up with a small amount of honor.

Ours is the county, located in the capital of the swing-state, yet it is also the place where the real story about problems in our election never got told. News teams were conspicuously absent from all those public hearings. Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, is on record as saying: " There were no problems in Ohio, whatsoever, beyond the usual election gaffes that happen in any election." This quote was circulated among the media, yet voters who lost their right to vote were not quoted. Disenfranchisement is a soft-sounding word, yet it is a horrific reality. What it means is that, by underhanded means, people were denied the right to vote.

I don't blame people in the other 49 states for not getting what we, in Ohio, mean when we say Voter Fraud or Disenfranchisement. How could they know any better without some serious research? Yet, as I heard a Nebraska Democrat speak on a national news show to Ohio citizens: "Get over it. Our candidate lost. Don't be sore losers." I wanted to respond...... "May God help you if this group chooses your state to be the next swing state because they've researched your subtle, sometimes outdated state election laws, found all the right gray areas, studied densities of population, gerrymandered your districts, and put one of their own in charge of the "free and fair" elections in your state."

After a small confidence speech to myself, I pulled myself together, put on some warm boots and found my way to the Board of Elections in Ashland County. This recount would now be used to collect the data necessary to take the next step in understanding what went wrong. Exit poll confusion, something that all election specialists look at in every other election around the world, were said by this administration to actually, in this case, not really mean that much.

Jimmy Carter, our former president, who has become an election specialist, working through the Carter Center, did not oversee our election because his suggestions after 2000, asked for by the administration in a "show" of good faith, were not taken seriously. Prior to the 2004 election, he said that it "is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation. It is especially objectionable among us Americans, who have prided ourselves on setting global examples for pure democracy. With reforms unlikely at this stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious practices in Florida."

We now have placed this intense scrutiny on the suspicious activity in Ohio. Though we couldn't do it before the electoral vote to actually make a difference to the outcome, we can now, at the very least, gain deeper insight into discrepancies.

In a recount, each candidate is entitled to send its own representative to oversee the process. I represented Cobb for the Green Party, another woman represented Badnarik, an Independent, and there were representatives from the Democrats and Republicans who showed up promptly for the 9am start. Also present were equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats from their Board of Elections and the staff from Ashland County who actually handled the ballots and fed them through the tabulation machine. Ms. Madhu Sing, a field representative for Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell was sent as an extra observer to this particular county.

A presidential election recount is a dread moment for any Board of Elections, a real bother and something that makes them vulnerable to outside eyes and possible criticism. As we all gathered for the day to begin, people were polite, yet tension hovered in the air, shown by tight smiles, crossed arms and serious attitudes.

The first question asked was about how they would take a random sampling of their precincts and the answer was that they had already figured out which precincts represented a typical random sampling. Since typical and random are opposing terms, this was not a random sample.

My report is posted on-line with the Green Party at www.votecobb.org, so here I'll just tell you of a few of my experiences and observations. I witnessed the Opti-Scan system of voting in Ashland County, which is similar to taking a multiple choice test where you fill in the correct circle with a number 2 pencil. Counting these ballots is done on a tabulation machine, scanning for areas marked by pencil. Erasures are a problem, since some pencil lead always remains embedded in the paper.

I learned what is meant by an overvote. It means that the intention of the voter isn't clear from whatever marks they put on their ballot. In a recount, the task is to try to make sure that ballots have not been thrown out without extra attention given to trying to ascertain the true intention of said voter. Marking an opti-scan ballot in pen rather than pencil, even if everything is filled in correctly, throws your vote out. All overvotes are re-examined in a recount.

The witness, me, spends a lot of time pointing at, but not touching certain ballots that appear to be clear as to the intention of the voter. Our chairs were on wheels, which meant we were like racecars that gun their engines at the appropriate moment and take off. But in our case we would lurch forward a few feet, to notice if, indeed, the offending ballot was credibly wrong, only to back up again a few minutes later and watch some more. Touching the cast ballots is absolutely forbidden.

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