After Ohio's recount rigging convictions in Cuyahoga, is Coshocton County next? by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman March 6, 2007
After the recent convictions of two Cuyahoga County Board of Election workers for felony recount tampering, Republican County Prosecutor Robert Batchelor is stonewalling efforts to investigate similar well-documented charges in Coshocton County, Ohio.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (BOE) third-ranking employee and an assistant manager were each convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct and a misdemeanor count of failing to perform their duties during the 2004 recount. The convictions stemmed from the secret pre-counting of precincts prior to the lawfully required open recount. The convicted election workers only allowed the pre-counted precincts that matched the official results to be used in the recount. This caused the special prosecutor to tell the jury that the election recount was "rigged" in Cuyahoga.
Testimony and eyewitness reports document similar activity in several Ohio counties regarding the illegal rigging of the 2004 recount.
The Green and Libertarian Parties brought the Ohio 2004 recount after Democratic hopeful John Kerry conceded with nearly a quarter of million votes uncounted in the state. Under Ohio law, county boards of elections must set a "time and place fixed for making a recount"" and ""in the presence of all witnesses [who may] may be in attendance, shall open the sealed containers containing the ballots to be recounted and shall recount them." The sealed ballot containers are to be opened in front of BOE officials and recount candidates may "attend an witness the recount and may have any person whom the candidate designates attend and witness the recount," under ORC 3515.03.
It is illegal to secretly pre-count recount ballots. The BOE can"t do a pre-count of ballots for whatever reason, secretly, after the certified vote goes to the state and after there has been a mandate for a statewide recount.
What happened in Coshocton County before the 2004 recount also appears to be a clear violation of Ohio law and could be damning for the Coshocton County BOE.
On December 8, 2004, Tim Kettler, the Coshocton County recount coordinator for Green presidential candidate David Cobb, was informed by a Coshocton County Board of Elections (BOE) employee that the county would officially recount on Tuesday, December 14.
In a follow up phone call to the BOE a few days later, Kettler learned that BOE Director Mary Fry was planning a full hand count on December 14. This was a surprise, since the Coshocton County BOE had certified its vote total to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell on December 6 as required by law and the required recount only mandated a hand count of 3% of the county's votes, not a full hand recount. The reasons for the hand count would prove even more shocking.
Documents obtained by the Free Press, from a criminal complaint filed by Kettler, show that despite fixing the legal time and place for the recount, the Coshocton County BOE ha begun to pre-count, just like Cuyahoga County, the ballots without notifying representatives of the Green and Libertarian Parties.
BOE records obtained by the Free Press, and filed by Kettler with Prosecutor Batchelor, indicate that a 'special Meeting" was called on December 9 by the Coshocton County BOE to discuss the recount. At the BOE meeting, "a motion was made by David Burns to hand count Precinct 3-C . . . " after the legal certification of the vote, and prior to the recount.
Records indicate that on December 10, 2004, a new certified vote total was sent to Blackwell's office.
Fry informed Kettler in a December 27, 2004 letter that the unexplained December 10 filing contained ". . . amended totals."
The December 27 letter to Kettler also documents that Director Fry knew that errors were being made by the ES&S 550 vote counting machines in tabulating the certified Election Day votes.
"Fry's reason for the allegedly illegal pre-count calls into question the accuracy of ES&S scantron voting machines: "MANY OF THE ERRORS IN TOTALS WERE NOTED TO HAVE BEEN CONDUCTED ON THE 550 [ES&S] COUNTER, WHERE TOTALS ON THE 150 COUNTER WERE STILL REMAINING THE SAME AS ON ELECTION NIGHT AND DURING OUR RECOUNT OF THE BALLOTS FOR CERTIFICATION TOTALS."
The Free Press found similar problems with ES&S 550 counting machines during the 2004 election in Miami County. In Miami County, the counter appeared to add phantom votes never cast to the 2004 presidential election totals. (See "Official States Electronic Voting System Added Votes Never Cast in 2004 Presidential Election; Audit Log Missing," by Peter Peckarsky, Ron Baiman and Robert Fitrakis.)
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